My points of view, travels and code

Life advice

Last month during the Rio Olympics it broke news the story of Argentine Santiago Lange after he won a Gold Medal in sailing. Media featured for a week how this 54 years old man could beat everyone after recovering from cancer, getting one lung removed and getting two time-penalties during the race. They used him as an example of self-improvement and perseverance.

While his story is inspiring and I myself admire that guy, there’s something I didn’t hear anybody point out. It’s extremely admirable what he did and tells you that you can suceded no matter what, which is somehow true. But now, I want to focus for a second about the guy who got second. He is the guy who couldn’t get a gold medal because he got beaten by an old man with just one lung. Think about how pathetic he could feel.

And even worse, think about the guy who got fourth. He was beaten by the same old man and went home with empty hands. I want you to think what those excellent sport-men thought about themselves, what they felt and what kind of stories they were telling themselves.

And here it comes my story. I am the guy who’s been coding since I am 12 and couldn’t get a technical internship at a big company. Name a company you know, I probably applied for an internship there. Yes, I did apply to that one you are thinking about right know. This painful process has been going on for two years now and I even got really really close to actually getting one, but so far I have received rejection after rejection. I saw my classmates who starting coding years after I did land an internship while I got turned down. And please don’t get me wrong here, they are all great developers, they did deserve what they got and I can honestly tell you I hold no envy to them.

Why I am telling you this? Because failing sucks and all the stories we hear about are about winning or about someone who has already won, but nobody seems to care about the losers and that can potentially hurt us when we ourselves have to deal with frustrations. I know you have to fail to success and even I had accomplished things after failing. But that doesn’t change the fact that failing still sucks. We shouldn’t try to pretend we don’t get hiten by frustration and speak up, because we are all failing all the time and nobody is talking about it on Facebook 1)Yes, I know some who do, but I’ve noticed they tend to be the ones with really low self-estime or are yelling for attention.

This all means I am giving up and this is my good-bye letter to the tech internship hunting word and self-help is going to be my new field? No for the moment and I am preparing for the next one as hard as I can, but I would be lying if I tell you that I didn’t think about quitting.